Those Who Favor Fire by Lauren Wolk (easy readers .TXT) 📕

that the fire far underground—never any worse than a bit of smoke and a bad smell—may already have displaced the remains interred in Belle Haven’s Presbyterian graveyard. “We’ve warned people, the last five years or so, about such a possibility,” she was told. “But people just ignore us, generally.”

“Nobody ever warned me,” Sophia protested.

“When did your husband die?” they asked her.

“January, 1965,” she said.

“Well, there you go,” they said. “The fire hadn’t even started yet back then.”

“But what is there to worry about, anyway? I don’t care if the coffin’s a bit singed, as long as it’s in one piece. As long as it can be moved.” As she talked, she tried to pretend this was not her Otto they were discussing. She tried not to think about him at all.

“Ma’am, we think that maybe some of the remains may have been displaced. That’s what we’re talking about here.”

“Displaced! What do you mean, displaced?”

“Gone,” they said.

And so she had made up her mind, right then and there, to move Otto. It might have been difficult anywhere else, but Belle Haven wasn’t like anywhere else. All it took was permission, quickly granted, and hired people who knew how to manage such things. It surprised Sophia that there were such people, and that they were listed in her yellow pages.

“I want to be there when you move him,” she insisted, and so she was. Much to her endless regret.

Otto had not been displaced. Not really. But his coffin was simply gone, reduced to ash and splinters. By the time their shovels reached him, Otto had been for years exposed to the heat of the fire and the brutal invasion of underground things. Not expecting this, one of the diggers had scooped Otto’s skull onto the blade of his shovel. There had been no coffin to slow his stroke, and he had tossed the skull out onto the grass before he’d even realized what he’d unearthed.

Sophia, closer than she should have been, saw the skull roll across the grass, flakes of dirt falling from it as it bumped along. She screamed at the sight and then ran away, around the church and straight into it, screaming all the while.

It took no time for the news to spread, for a crowd to assemble at the hot little graveyard. Angela and Rachel arrived as Sophia emerged from the church, her son and his wife at her side.

“Put him back,” she told the diggers, who had covered the skull with a bucket. “Put him back carefully, just the way he was, and fill the grave back in.” At the look on their faces, she bared her teeth and shook her head. “I’ll pay you for your time,” she said, and went on back to Randall.

“What are you going to do?” Rachel asked Angela on their way back to the Kitchen.

“Fix lunch, I guess.”

“About your dad, Angie.”

“About my dad? What’s there to do? I’d rather be boiled in oil than dig him up. If he’s like Otto is … well, I guess it doesn’t make much difference to him. And if he’s not there at all, I really don’t want to know about it. I happen to believe that there’s nothing really important down there anyway.”

“Me, too,” Rachel said, thinking of her grandparents, the cast-iron ring that hung next to her kitchen sink, and the sight of her parents’ ashes as they’d melted in the icy water of Raccoon Creek.

Chapter 25

        Always an especially spooky event in Belle Haven, Halloween that year was truly unnerving, for Otto’s exhumation was still on everyone’s mind and those who had seen his skull come pitching out of the grave could not forget it. Some of the smaller children, too nervous to go trick-or-treating, had Halloween parties at home. Even the older children stayed clear of the land above the tunnels, for it was a moonless night, full of wind and raccoons on the prowl.

Rachel, in the willow tree in the park, was busier than she’d ever been. She had made herself an octopus costume, with tentacles that she draped over the branches, a huge, bulbous body, red eyes, and a sharp beak. To make up for the tardy moon, she put fresh batteries in her biggest flashlights, stretched red cellophane over their lamps, and taped them to the tree trunk above her so that she was bathed in a red glow.

The children were impressed.

“Golly, Rachel, is that you?” asked Rusty.

“Who’s Rachel?” she croaked, weaving and nodding in the tree above. “Come a little closer now, and I’ll give you a sucker.”

When the children sidled up, she let out a shriek and swung a tentacle at them, which they loved. Then she tossed down some lollipops and sent them away.

This was a strange night for Rachel. Halloween always had been. As a young child, she had toddled around the town with the other children, collecting candy, saying Boo! at people. But when she was nine, several things had happened.

First, she had wanted to be Captain Hook, but her mother, insisting that no little girl could be a pirate, had dressed her as a milkmaid instead. Swinging a metal pail, she had gone out after sunset with her friend Caroline, who was dressed as Red Riding Hood. Before they’d gotten very far, Caroline had stumbled on her cloak and fallen, bloodied her nose, skinned her hands, and banged up her knee so she could barely walk. Rachel had helped her home and left her there, intending to join the next batch of children that came down the street. But, standing in Caroline’s front yard, she had become captivated by the stars and by the feeling of being completely alone, invisible in the night, on her own.

It had taken her only a few minutes to scamper down the street to the park and up into the branches of the big willow where her father had taught her to climb trees. From there, she had watched the other children making their way down Maple Street. She